As I write this, I am drinking speed, and you cannot stop me. You cannot stop me, America, with your altruism and your Alan Alda and your Fresca cans biting at my skin. I shall speed across this country like a great high-speed train and the U.S. shall be forever changed in my wake.
Yes, I am both a speedboat and a speed train, and I will mix metaphors if I wish and bend language to my own reality like rails of garbage steel. Because Ronald Reagan has deposed Jimmy Carter, and I predict that by 2013 my influence will be profound, and a new generation of leaders will hallow my name, and devotion to self-interest and capitalism and the free market will not be the exception but the rule, and these leaders will naturally share my disapproval of religion, my support of abortion rights, and my love of Godiva chocolates. I have to stop writing now, because I have chewed through my typewriter.
I like a lot of her writings and she has a lot more moral authority when shitting on communism and collectivism than those who support such shit do from their Ivory Towers as her family actually went through what hapens when the state rules all.
My biggest problem with her and an area her critics use against her philosophy is that for some one so big on thinking and living for yourself, she had a big group of synchophants that she was quick to punish when they stepped out of line.
She had a hungry pussy to boot and was not a bad looking woman into her 60's.
"God forbid we tell the savages to go fuck themselves." Batboy
I like a lot of her writings and she has a lot more moral authority when shitting on communism and collectivism than those who support such shit do from their Ivory Towers as her family actually went through what hapens when the state rules all.
My biggest problem with her and an area her critics use against her philosophy is that for some one so big on thinking and living for yourself, she had a big group of synchophants that she was quick to punish when they stepped out of line.
She had a hungry pussy to boot and was not a bad looking woman into her 60's.
Rand was a fraud of mammoth proportions. She made a fortune talking a talk that she never walked. Although she did a great job convincing a legion of simpering sycophants that they were rugged individuals.
And when she squandered her ill-gotten fortune, she accepted social security, welfare and Medicare to survive. Fucking hypocrite.
I don't know about the validity of the claim that she took social security or that she died penniless. I'd have to go look and I don't want to embark on another internet "he said, she said" search. Taking social security, though, would not make her a hypocrite. She may have railed against such gov't programs but nothing about her philosophy, that I'm aware, and I claim no expertise, would demand she not accept benefits for which she had paid. Her philosophy, again to my understanding, stated that the gov't should never force people into participating in such programs, not that they should not accept the benefits they were entitled to if they were so forced.
In a century where commies & nazis murdered tens of millions of their own citizens, and many Americans said, "Communism/socialism sounds good in theory...," Rand provided a strong moral argument against all forms of statism. Her books were widely read, and helped foster the libertarianism (actually, classical Liberalism) that still has life in the Republican Party.
She didn't lead a perfect life, and was blind to some glaring faults in herself & others. But she made great contributions to ethical & political thought.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
I believe that line was written by no less an intellectual heavy weight than the guy who screen wrote both thought provoking mega-sensation movies, Transformers and Catwoman. Megan Fox and Halle Berry in a tight leather body suit influenced more 14 year old boys than either of those books.
